Maureen Janson Heintz
A Wisconsin Wrights reading in 2017.
Lila Hovey was in college when they heard a podcast recounting the story of James Miranda Barry, an Irish surgeon noted for performing the first successful C-section in Africa. At his death, it was discovered that though he’d lived for more than 50 years as a man, at birth he’d been an assigned female. That story was the inspiration for a new play, Anatomical Hearts, set in 1850, a reworking of Hovey’s senior honors thesis. It’s one of three finalists in Forward Theater’s biennial Wisconsin Wrights New Play Festival, now in its 18th year. Readings of all three plays will take place in May at Edgewood College’s The Stream theater, Hovey’s on May 18.
“People often see [these issues] as a completely modern conflict, but putting them in an historical context helps underline that being trans is just a part of the human experience and has been for ages,” says Hovey, who identifies as trans-masculine and non-binary and recently graduated from Dartmouth.
Queer and trans issues are only part of the social issues the play engages with. The story focuses on Lucie Sharpe, a woman admitted to Harvard Medical School only to have her admission revoked. This, like most of the play, is also based on Hovey’s research.
Forward Theater Company has been a leader in producing new plays since its start. The Wisconsin Wrights program features week-long residencies at the company for the three finalists.
Thomas Campbell’s The Flying Corpse opens the festival on May 16. The play looks at a family dealing with an unusual funeral request from a recently deceased father who had presented a number of unresolved problems when he was alive. Campbell, an associate professor at UW-Green Bay and managing director of its theater and dance department, has written many plays dealing with family conflict, usually involving alcoholism. The problem here is that the deceased wants his final resting place to be determined by where he lands after his body has been hurled aloft by a trebuchet (a kind of medieval catapult). The family doesn’t want to adhere to his request, “but somehow feel obligated,” says Campbell. “So how does that permeate the family dynamic?”
On May 17, the featured play is The Other Side by Quan Barry, professor of English at UW-Madison. It takes on YouTube and what’s called “a tricky financial situation.” Like Hovey’s play, Barry’s draws on history. There wasn’t YouTube in 1940, but there were sideshows and carnivals. A freaky headless chicken that wouldn’t die brought its owner $4,500 a month. In the present day, Barry’s protagonists — Bao, a software architect, and Zinnia, a medical resident — hope to use their pet chicken to solve their financial trouble. Barry says “the play is mostly an exploration of the American dream” and the ways in which, particularly through social media, “we aspire to have large audiences and the consequences of what can happen when we achieve our dreams.”
Advance tickets are not necessary; a $15 donation is suggested. All shows are at 7:30 p.m.
[Editor's note: Due to an editing error, Lila Hovey was initially referred to incorrectly. Hovey uses they/them pronouns.]
